In fact, running on battery power, it gets only half the distance per kilowatt-hour delivered by the Chevy Volt, the only other range-extended electric car on the market this year.

And the cars we've driven had some disturbing quality issues, from teething troubles like displays that froze and went dark to panel alignment issues and body gaps that wouldn't have been acceptable on the cheapest Korean import 15 years ago.

Fisker Automotive has already spent $100 million of its own (non-DoE) capital funds on development work for Project Nina, its second car, which is the vehicle for which the bulk of the DoE funds were designated, Fisker said.

Working toward self-sufficiency

But the prospect for DoE loans is "not going to get much better this year," since it's an election year, Fisker said.

"We're not dependent on the DoE, we didn't want to be dependent on the DoE, so we're working harder to become self-sufficient," he said--meaning selling enough Karmas globally to cover the development costs of Project Nina internally.

We'll post our complete interview with Fisker soon.

Name the last one

We get asked a lot about the future of Fisker Automotive, and also Tesla Motors. They're high-profile auto startups of a quality and professionalism not seen in decades.

But we always answer the questions with a query of our own: What's the last auto company founded from scratch in the U.S. by entrepreneurs whose brand is still with us today?

The answer is Chrysler.

And that was 88 years ago.

No one's managed to do it since. Many have tried--Preston Tucker, Henry J. Kaiser, Malcolm Bricklin, John Delorean, and more--but none have succeeded.